


A Moment's Pause

by alpacasandravens



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Will Graham, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, F/M, M/M, mostly will/molly-centric, past (and implied future) hannibal/will, set during the s3 timeskip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:34:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26129620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: Will moved in, and he proposed, and Molly said yes. She let Will keep his secrets, unwilling to push him. She loved him, and Walter accepted him as a part of their family, and that was enough. There was something in Will’s past that he was running from, and Molly was willing to help him run. This couldn’t last forever, she knew that from the haunted looks she caught on her fiance’s face sometimes. But his dogs filled their house, and when they laughed, she liked to think that it could.
Relationships: Molly Graham/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 39





	A Moment's Pause

**Author's Note:**

> I finished Hannibal this afternoon and had to write this. I'm so curious about Molly and Will's relationship, and wanted to explore Molly as a character. First Hannibal fic, so be kind! Also I did not proofread this at all, I am sorry.

Molly didn’t know who Will was the first time she met him. She’d never been an avid reader of Tattlecrime, and the man she spoke to barely resembled Will as he’d been in the Baltimore State Hospital, footage that the news had played fairly often the year before. He was simply a slightly strange man who liked to fish in a river she and Walter often hiked alongside. 

It was the beginning of summer, just getting hot enough that hiking became difficult, though the mosquitoes hadn’t come out in full force. Walter stopped to get some water on the bank, and Molly thought she should probably say something to the man standing in the river. 

“Catching anything?” she called. 

Will turned, and she saw when confusion at being spoken to flitted over his face and how he replaced it with a polite fake smile. “Nothing yet,” he said.

Walter screwed the top back on his water bottle and tapped Molly’s shoulder.

“Good luck!”

It was simple politeness to ask him the same question the next time she ran into him there three weeks later. It was really hot by then, a sticky Virginia summer in full swing, tolerable only because of the breeze from the river and the shade of the trees. 

The smile on his face was genuine this time when he responded “I’ve had a couple bites.”

The third time, Will responded the same way, but tacked on “Hey, what’s your name?” It felt slightly awkward, like Will wasn’t sure how to proceed with the social interaction.

“Molly.” She smiled warmly. 

“Nice to meet you, Molly,” he said. He cast his line again, attention gone, and Molly was nearly a mile away before she realized she forgot to ask his name.

It doesn’t matter, though, because she saw him again not too much later. It was the end of August, late enough in the season that the idea of fall was beginning to appear in the yellow tint of the leaves, but not late enough for the heat to have abated. Molly was tempted to take off her shoes and stand in the water just to feel its coolness.

“Having any luck?” she asked Will. 

“Not today.”

“You don’t seem to be in luck very often,” she said, half smiling so he would know she was joking. 

Will shrugged. “Fishing doesn’t have to be about the fish.”

Molly understood that. She used to hunt with her father as a teen, and that had been less about the venison they would bring home than about the shared experience. “What’s it about, then?”

“That’s a big question.” 

“We can start with smaller questions. What’s your name?” 

“Will.”

Molly wasn’t sure what possessed her to say it, but she smiled and said “If you want to come back to that big question, and maybe see a different river, I’m going to do a few miles of the AT next Saturday over in Shenandoah. You’re welcome to join me.”

Will smiled. “I’d like that,” he said, and Molly couldn’t help but notice he’d sounded almost surprised as he said it. 

She figured it out on their first date. She’d asked Will what he did for a living (she didn’t know what kind of a job allowed him to spend nearly as much time fishing as he did), and he’d tensed up.

“I’m unemployed,” he said after a pause long enough to become uncomfortable. He was silent for another few moments before he said “I used to teach.”

Molly didn’t want to make him any more uncomfortable than he already was - he clearly did not want to talk about his previous job - but she was curious. “What subject?”

“Criminal psychology,” he said, and the pieces clicked into place. As though he knew the connections her brain had made, he continued “I didn’t kill those people.”

This was, Molly thought, a very strange turn for a first date to take. She had never foreseen a time in her life where she would find out mid-date that the man she was out with had been accused of committing five brutal murders, and she had no idea whether there was an existing social script for her to follow.

She settled on “That’s good.”

Will’s shoulders drew up slightly, his gaze moved from the trees ahead of them to the ground. 

“If you’re expecting me to be scared of you now, I’m not.”

Will nodded and released exactly none of the tension from his body. His shoulders did not settle back at a normal shoulder height until a few minutes later, when Molly tapped his arm and pointed out into the woods beside them. “I think I saw a bunny!” she said, and watched him out of the corner of her eye until she saw his face soften. 

~~~

Will got a phone call one day, a few months into their relationship. He’d been replacing a cabinet hinge in Molly’s kitchen when his phone rang, and Molly could see all the joy drain from his face as he listened to whoever was talking. 

“I told you, I’m done with that,” he said, words sharp. “Tell Chilton he can burn my copy for all I care.” 

“Who was that?” Molly asked after he’d hung up.

“Work.” 

Molly knew that Will’s current job with a local air conditioning repair company wouldn’t cause him to look like this - he’d talked about not loving the work, but it was something to do with his hands and with his time. Now, there was a fount of barely-contained rage beneath his skin, all sparked by a phone call that had lasted less than a minute.

“Try again.”

“Jack Crawford, with the FBI.” Will looked strangely pensive as he said “It’s been hard to disentangle myself from that place.”

Molly reached up to brush a hand through his hair and down his cheek, cupping his face. “You’re not there anymore. You’re here, okay?” She kissed him lightly, a reminder she was still there. 

He drew in a shaky breath. “I quit after Hannibal Lecter surrendered himself into police custody in my driveway. Jack just offered to send me a copy of Dr. Chilton’s new book on Hannibal.”

“If you don’t want to read it, you don’t have to.”

Will put his hand over where hers still rested. “Every time I think I’ve cut him out of myself, the world finds a way to remind me of him.”

This is by far the most Will had ever said about his previous job, and the first time he’d mentioned anything to do with Hannibal Lecter aside from what could be obtained from a simple newspaper article. 

“Were you… close?” she asked.

Will’s eyes slipped closed. He nodded.

Molly wanted to know more, but Will looked like he was about to fall apart right there, so she said nothing. Will didn’t volunteer any more information.

Will moved in, and he proposed, and Molly said yes. She let Will keep his secrets, unwilling to push him. She loved him, and Walter accepted him as a part of their family, and that was enough. There was something in Will’s past that he was running from, and Molly was willing to help him run. This couldn’t last forever, she knew that from the haunted looks she caught on her fiance’s face sometimes. But his dogs filled their house, and when they laughed, she liked to think that it could.

“There are some things you should probably know about me, before we get married,” Will said one night. He was lying on his back, and if Molly didn’t know he’d never gone to sleep, she would have guessed from the late hour he was waking up from a nightmare.

“Okay.”

He laughed nervously. “I don’t really know where to start.”

“You can start wherever you want to.” 

This was, Molly thought, a conversation Will could only have now. In the middle of the night, the room so dark she could barely see the outline of where he lay next to her. 

“I’m bisexual. I didn’t think it was the sort of thing that would bother you, but…” he trailed off. “I’ve never said that out loud before.”

Molly had always known Will repressed a lot of things about himself, but something in her chest hurt that he’d worried about telling her this much. That he was nearly forty years old and had never come out to anyone before. 

“That’s okay, sweetie. You know I’d never think less of you for that.”

“Before I met you…”

Molly waited for what felt like several minutes, but in the dark she could never be sure of time. “Will?” she prompted.

“Do you know why Hannibal surrendered himself in my driveway?”

Molly shook her head, then remembered Will couldn’t see her. “No.” Her voice felt hollow.

“Because I dumped him.” There was a trace of ironic amusement in his voice, like he was laughing at his past self’s stupidity. “I dumped him, and he turned himself in so that I would always know where he was.”

“Okay,” Molly said, just to process. She’d always known there was a lot Will kept close to his chest, had accepted a long time ago that she would probably never know all his secrets. She had never imagined anything like this. “Is Walter safe? Are we safe?”

Will finally reached out to her then, trying to comfort her by taking her hand. “Yes. I’d never put you in danger.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” Molly said, though there was a lot she did not know about Will. “But your ex is a serial killer.”

“He won’t leave his cell. Not unless he knows he’ll get me back, and he won’t.” He sounds so certain, and Molly doesn’t know how he can be.

“Did you know? About him, when you were together?” she asks after a few moments of silence.

The night is so still that every word seems to break it, but none more so than when Will said “I wish I could tell you I didn’t.”

“Did he make you stay with him?” Molly tried to think of headlines on Hannibal she’d seen, tried to remember anything she could about the Chesapeake Ripper. She didn’t know which answer she feared more - that her fiance had known Hannibal’s true nature and not cared, or that he had been trapped in what must have been an unhealthy relationship with a serial killer.

“No.”

“You knew, and you loved him?”

Will sighed. “Part of me always will, I think. But you had to know, so you could decide if you still love me.”

“If I love you, can you promise me Walter and I will be safe?”

“Yes.”

Molly squeezed Will’s hand. “Then it’s not a question of whether I still love you. It’s whether you love me, and want to build a life here.”

Will rolled onto his side, facing her. “Of course I do,” he said, kissing her softly.

~~~

When Jack comes for Will, Molly knows there’s no way for him to refuse. “You’ll be helping people,” she says with a sad smile. Will would hate himself for staying.

“I won’t be the same, when I get back,” he warns her.

Molly knows what he’s really saying. That after three years of work to get away from the FBI, it will suck him right back in. That the organization is, to him, so entwined with his time with Hannibal that he can’t separate the two. 

“I will,” she says. She kisses him for what she hopes won’t be the last time. “I love you.”

“I’ll be back soon,” Will says. He joins Jack in the car, and Molly watches as the government-issue SUV pulls Will away from her.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, comments and kudos make my day!


End file.
